Victims' families devastated as Colorado farmers avoid prison after deadly melon outbreak

In many instances, individuals working in certain industries or in charge of certain jobs carry much more importance and responsibility. If an individual makes a mistake at a, lets say, clerk job, their burden of responsibility would not be as high as a police officer for example. In recent revelations, farmers now in the United States carry a lot more pressure and responsibility and even bare the risk of jail time.  Two Colorado farmers, the Jensen’s, just avoided jail time but were sentenced to five years of probation and a large fine. This was due to their cantaloupe farm being contaminated resulting in the deaths of 33 people. The listeria outbreak occurring in the farm was not caused as a result of criminal negligence or for the sole purpose of harming others. This crisis was caused due to negligence and improper planning of procedures and product safety standards.

The most important factor in crises communication is to be aware of all your plans and procedures ahead of time in order to prevent a crisis like this from occurring. Even though preventative measures will greatly reduce risk, it will not completely eliminate the crises. In a crisis this like this where the disaster has already been done the most important task the brothers can do is to exhibit their sincerity, apology, to show their growth in that they learned from their mistake and to allow people to believe the deed done was unintentional.  The brothers willingly wanted to plead guilty to jail time as they stated that the outbreak happened on their watch. But they did not want their guilty plead to allow people to think that their negligent acts were done maliciously. As a crises communicator, this can go both ways. One, the families of the victims want to see retribution and will want to see the brothers punished no matter what they release. On the other hand, many individuals believed the brothers were “good, honest, Americans who just made a mistake” after they wanted to plead guilty. The Jenson brothers also apologized in court and stated that a third-party auditor that checked their products verified to them that their products were safe to be shipped.  In a crises like this where 33 deaths are involved, apologizing is simply not enough. This crises occurred due to their negligence and lack of procedure therefore, they must be required to do proper product and safety training in order to prevent this from occurring again in the future.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/28/22483133-victims-families-devastated-as-colorado-farmers-avoid-prison-after-deadly-melon-outbreak